I am an experienced recreational runner with the emphasis on recreational. At 52 my main aim is to keep enjoying running and to remain injury free.
I have never been speedy but would trundle along at between 10 and 11 min mile pace, but at closer to 10 min miles I would be struggling to maintain that.

I have looked at Chi Running in the past, read the book and tried some stuff out but never really committed to the whole package- I just tried to tweak bits here and there.
The past couple of weeks I decided to revisit Chi Running but despite the book and doing the exercises I was really not getting it at all.
My main frustration was my butt!!! When I got tired a wee bit I felt it sort of stuck out, so I tried to counter that by engaging my lower abs more, but that did not feel right either and caused tension and pain in my glutes.
I looked here on the website for inspiration and possibly a source of local tuition and found by chance the app for iphone which I liked the look of and downloaded.

My goodness….what a revelation! I used it this morning with some basic focuses and the metronome set at 175. I really feel I learned a huge amount.

The problem I assumed was a butt/lower ab issue ended up possibly to be caused (I think) by my shoulders falling out of line with my hips…does that make sense? If that is the case….and if I am going by the effect on my running….I was possibly bending at the waist slightly. A simple spoken reminder on the focus of engaging my abs by bringing my shoulders back in line with my hips was really startling in effect.
The metronome I found also helped me focus which was great….I just need to make sure I increase that slowly I guess.
What I read in the book about body sensing as opposed to thinking about what I ‘should’ be doing made complete sense this morning- I had been thinking too much and not sensing enough, running with my head and not my body.

The one thing however is that my speed has dropped in all this. This morning’s run was well over 12 min mile pace. My gut feeling is not to be overly concerned about that…would that be right?
The other thing possibly would be to really pay attention to gradual progress building on what I have experienced this morning.
Am I on the right track with all of this? Feels like I am, but I guess I wanted some input.

You are right on target about sensing versus thinking. As for your speed, it will come back as you master good alignment. Shoulders and hips work together - when one goes out of alignment, so does the other. Hence, paying attention to the shoulders (relaxed and aligned) will make it easier to engage the core and allow the pelvic rotation to happen.